xvYCC was motivated by the fact that modern display and capture technologies often have underlying RGB primaries with significantly higher saturation than the traditional CRT displays, allowing them to handle a wider color gamut. But these devices have been unable to do this without upsetting basic calibration, as all existing video storage and transmission systems are based on CRT primaries, and are hence limited to the CRT gamut.[3]

xvYCC-encoded video retains the same color primaries and white point as BT.709, and uses either a BT.601 or BT.709 RGB-to-YCC conversion matrix and encoding.[2] This allows it to travel through existing digital YCC data paths, and any colors within the normal gamut will be compatible.[2]

The xvYCC color space permits YCC values that, while within the encoding range of YCC, have chroma values outside the range 16–240, or that correspond to negative RGB values, and hence would not have previously been valid.[2] These are used to encode more saturated colors.[2] For example, a cyan that lies outside the basic gamut of the primaries can be encoded as "green plus blue minus red".[2]

These extra-gamut colors can then be displayed by a device whose underlying technology is not limited by the standard primaries.[2]

In a paper published by Society for Information Display in 2006, the authors mapped the 769 colors in the Munsell Color Cascade to the BT.709 space and to the xvYCC space. 55% of the Munsell colors could be mapped to the sRGB gamut, but 100% of those colors could map to the xvYCC gamut.[4] Deeper hues can be created – for example a deeper red by giving the opposing color (cyan) a negative coefficient.

A mechanism for signaling xvYCC support and transmitting the gamut boundary definition for xvYCC has been defined in the HDMI 1.3 Specification. No new mechanism is required for transmitting the xvYCC data itself, as it is compatible with HDMI's existing YCbCr formats, but the display needs to signal its readiness to accept the extra-gamut xvYCC values, and the source needs to signal the actual gamut in use to help the display to intelligently adapt extreme colors to its own gamut limitations.

This should not be confused with HDMI 1.3's other new color feature, deep color. This is a separate feature that increases the precision of brightness and color information, and is independent of xvYCC.

On January 7, 2013, Sony announced that it would release "Mastered in 4K" Blu-ray Disc titles which are sourced at 4K and encoded at 1080p.[5] "Mastered in 4K" Blu-ray Disc titles can be played on existing Blu-ray Disc players and will support a larger color space using xvYCC.[5][6]

On May 30, 2013, Eye IO announced that their encoding technology was licensed by Sony Pictures Entertainment to deliver 4K Ultra HD video.[7][8] Eye IO encodes their video assets at 3840 x 2160 and includes support for the xvYCC color space.[7][8]